UK retailers swamped by overseas internet shoppers

04 Feb '14

4 min read

Highlights:

-Q4 2013 experienced a 64% increase in the total volume of overseas consumers searching for UK brands on smartphones, with a 41% year-on-year increase in the volume of searches by tablet.

-Germany, the Russian Federation and Argentina have seen the most substantial growth rates in smartphone search volumes at 231%, 145% and 137% respectively, for UK retail searches.

-A number of countries demonstrated considerable rates of growth in tablet searches including Germany (130%), France (78%), Russian Federation (66%), Ireland (56%) and the Netherlands (47%).

-The number of UK consumers searching on smartphones for overseas retailers rose 28% year-on-year ending Q4 2013, while on tablets this figure grow by 43%.

-All sectors experienced an increase in the volume of overseas customers searching for UK retailers on both smartphones and tablets.

-Department stores witnessed the largest increases in searches by smartphones, with a 78% increase followed by Apparel (66%) and Beauty (56%).

-Beauty was the most searched sector by overseas customers on tablets, experiencing an increase of (51%), followed by Department Stores at (46%) and Apparel (41%).

The BRC-Google Online Retail Monitor (ORM) measures changes and trends in the growth of retail search terms over time. Every time someone goes online and Googles a retail product, that search is counted towards totals for the month and the quarter.

For each search query Google assesses how likely it is to be a retail search, based on the history of previous searches for that term, then weights it accordingly.

There are a number of metrics the Monitor measures, for example, the growth of mobile retail searches. These metrics will be reported on a quarterly basis but the overall ORM also analyses growth rates in individual months.

British Retail Consortium

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